i never finished oblivion; i didnt hate it but at the time it was just too dense & involved and i was beginning to dread picking it up to read.
broom of the system is great & funny and easier to read. and not as big and intimidating as IJ
― rip dom passantino 3/5/09 never forget (max), Tuesday, 30 June 2009 15:33 (fourteen years ago) link
i said to cankles the other day that i wanted to jump to defend oblivion but i felt like someone going "no no jerry garcia's playing on the 70s versions of dark star is totally different"
broom of the system's first chapter is a glimmer of real potential; a lot of the rest of the book he spends being the sort of writer he spent a lot of the rest of his career kicking against
― thomp, Tuesday, 30 June 2009 15:42 (fourteen years ago) link
my po-mo/contemporary american lit. course as an undergrad had cosmopolis on it, by the way: i get the feeling this one might be on a lot of syllabi bcz it's easy to teach in a "Hey, kids, this is what POSTMODERNISM looks like" way, like the dead father is.
― thomp, Tuesday, 30 June 2009 15:44 (fourteen years ago) link
oblivion is patchy but "good old neon" and "oblivion" are undeniably great.
― jed_, Tuesday, 30 June 2009 16:04 (fourteen years ago) link
good old neon is the only one i actively hated
― FUCKIN 'TALLICA BRO (cankles), Tuesday, 30 June 2009 16:09 (fourteen years ago) link
guess undeniably was the wrong adverb to use
― rip dom passantino 3/5/09 never forget (max), Tuesday, 30 June 2009 16:11 (fourteen years ago) link
heh. yeah. undeniably owned.
― FUCKIN 'TALLICA BRO (cankles), Tuesday, 30 June 2009 16:17 (fourteen years ago) link
http://www.samplereality.com/2009/07/19/the-truth-behind-jay-murray-siskinds-review-of-david-foster-wallace/
― Mr. Que, Wednesday, 22 July 2009 20:55 (fourteen years ago) link
hey guys, i'm trying to find an essay written by a woman who taught a class on david foster wallace after he died. i think she's a professor at the same college he taught at and the article talked about the temptation of reading too much of his life in the work. does anyone have the link? i'm not having any luck here.
― Ømår Littel (Jordan), Wednesday, 22 July 2009 21:06 (fourteen years ago) link
look at infinitesummer.org -- I think she did a blog post there about teaching the class
― nabisco, Wednesday, 22 July 2009 21:08 (fourteen years ago) link
Kathleen Fitzpatrick, is that who you're looking for? http://infinitesummer.org/archives/931
― nabisco, Wednesday, 22 July 2009 21:09 (fourteen years ago) link
sure is, thanks!
― Ømår Littel (Jordan), Wednesday, 22 July 2009 21:24 (fourteen years ago) link
http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/content/823228?inPopup=true
^^this interview is so great
― johnny crunch, Friday, 28 August 2009 02:22 (fourteen years ago) link
wow. i'm only like ten minutes in, too.
― Mr. Que, Friday, 28 August 2009 02:35 (fourteen years ago) link
some great mp3s here incl. old DFW interviews and a long interview with his sister with some funny anecdotes.
― Ømår Littel (Jordan), Thursday, 3 September 2009 18:09 (fourteen years ago) link
where
― just sayin, Thursday, 3 September 2009 18:21 (fourteen years ago) link
oh ha
http://www.wpr.org/book/090823a.cfm
― Ømår Littel (Jordan), Thursday, 3 September 2009 18:29 (fourteen years ago) link
cheers, look awes
― just sayin, Thursday, 3 September 2009 18:35 (fourteen years ago) link
this is so great.
― strongohulkingtonsghost, Thursday, 3 September 2009 19:11 (fourteen years ago) link
day before yesterday was driving across central Illinois listening to that WPR show.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Thursday, 3 September 2009 21:32 (fourteen years ago) link
It sound so good I'm actually considering taking a break to locate/purchase a USB connection so I can put it on my mp3 player for the walk home.
― nabisco, Thursday, 3 September 2009 21:49 (fourteen years ago) link
It's good, wouldn't say magnificent. It really brings home -- or maybe this is done with editing -- how the problem DFW writes about in "E Unibus Pluram" is central to him for twenty-five years afterwards, and in some sense he makes no progress on it.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Thursday, 3 September 2009 21:51 (fourteen years ago) link
http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/briefinterviewswithhideousmen/
― fleetwood (max), Friday, 4 September 2009 01:58 (fourteen years ago) link
features two different law and order spinoff alums!
oh man that looks like shit.
― i'm beasting off the riesling (M@tt He1ges0n), Saturday, 5 September 2009 00:03 (fourteen years ago) link
yeah seriously bummed about this probable garbage.
― strongohulkingtonsghost, Saturday, 5 September 2009 00:21 (fourteen years ago) link
May be of interest only to DFW fans who are also serious tennis fans: tennis journalist/blogger Steve Tignor has been writing a great series of articles about DFW's tennis essays on his blog Concrete Elbow.
― Roz, Thursday, 1 October 2009 06:55 (fourteen years ago) link
This explains much.
― Ned Raggett, Saturday, 3 October 2009 13:33 (fourteen years ago) link
Re Alan Lelchuk, quoted in Ned's link: I liked his novel _American Mischief_, which I think has been completely forgotten.
http://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/2665.htm
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Saturday, 3 October 2009 23:16 (fourteen years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_sQrxAorDo
― just sayin, Thursday, 22 October 2009 15:08 (fourteen years ago) link
http://quomodocumque.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/wallace-amherst_review-the_planet.pdf
― nice email (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Wednesday, 11 November 2009 00:49 (fourteen years ago) link
:(
― just sayin, Wednesday, 11 November 2009 09:32 (fourteen years ago) link
jeez :/
― thomp, Wednesday, 11 November 2009 11:04 (fourteen years ago) link
has this been posted before?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwS5pEfcQNk
hardened my resolve 2 retackle infinite jest
― plaxico (I know, right?), Wednesday, 11 November 2009 11:45 (fourteen years ago) link
Intense essay. Anyone else puzzled by the ending?
― calstars, Wednesday, 11 November 2009 15:52 (fourteen years ago) link
this thing?
it's a short story
― jazzgasms (Mr. Que), Wednesday, 11 November 2009 15:55 (fourteen years ago) link
yeh but it ends kinda
― zappi, Wednesday, 11 November 2009 15:58 (fourteen years ago) link
it ends kinda weirdly midsentence, yeah, just like his first book, can't say i'm a fan of it
― jazzgasms (Mr. Que), Wednesday, 11 November 2009 15:59 (fourteen years ago) link
i like this ending much more than that ending! this one felt coherent and clear and characteristic.
poor dude :(
― Gravel Puzzleworth, Wednesday, 11 November 2009 16:43 (fourteen years ago) link
god, he was 21 when he wrote that
― sexual alien v. sexual predator (m bison), Wednesday, 11 November 2009 16:44 (fourteen years ago) link
yeah
― jazzgasms (Mr. Que), Wednesday, 11 November 2009 16:45 (fourteen years ago) link
Did Brief Interviews with Hideous Men ever get released to theaters?
― Nuyorican oatmeal (jaymc), Wednesday, 11 November 2009 16:47 (fourteen years ago) link
i think it was released in limited places? This is kind of interesting
There’s a bit of an announcement we’re hoping you can make about Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Can you tell us about that?John Krasinski: Hulu’s premiering the movie first on the Internet (after it finishes its run in theaters), so we’re a part of that, and that’s fantastic.
― jazzgasms (Mr. Que), Wednesday, 11 November 2009 16:49 (fourteen years ago) link
Huh, I guess it's played in NYC, L.A., and Boston, and is scheduled for Philadelphia and Austin this weekend. Weird that it never made it to Chicago. But I'd just as soon watch it on Hulu, anyway.
― Nuyorican oatmeal (jaymc), Wednesday, 11 November 2009 16:53 (fourteen years ago) link
yeah it's weird it hasn't made it to DC either, but then again it's only 80 minutes
― jazzgasms (Mr. Que), Wednesday, 11 November 2009 16:55 (fourteen years ago) link
i think the ending trailing off is referring to his fear that the Bad Thing is really... "you"
as in:Being far away sort of helps with respect to the Bad Thing. Except that is just highly silly when you consider what I said before concerning the fact that the Bad Thing is really [you.]
― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Wednesday, 11 November 2009 18:58 (fourteen years ago) link
I guess didn't feel it was a midsentence ending so much as a defined one that deliberately omitted its last word, for reasons that made sense! Whereas Broom's is all kinds of poncey and irritating.
Has anyone seen the Brief Interviews film? Is it good?
― Gravel Puzzleworth, Wednesday, 11 November 2009 19:38 (fourteen years ago) link
I read this as "considering the fact of what the Bad Thing is, really."I liked this story. It feels much less contrived than his other fiction. Unless this is actually about him, in which case :(
― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 11 November 2009 19:45 (fourteen years ago) link
i have a bad feeling about that brief interviews movie
― Thanks to ILX for the research and links. (M@tt He1ges0n), Wednesday, 11 November 2009 19:48 (fourteen years ago) link
i'm sure it's mostly bad but i want to see it anyway
― Ømår Littel (Jordan), Wednesday, 11 November 2009 19:50 (fourteen years ago) link